Epson ES-50

Product	Images / Minute	Resolution	Connectivity	Duplex Scanning	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Epson ES-50	10 IPM	600 dpi	USB 2.0	No	No	0.59 lb. (0.26 kg)	Click for more info

The Epson Workforce ES-50 portable document scanners is a fantastic portable scanner at the 100$ price point. It is cheap and offers most of the basic functions that you need. Epson calls it the fastest and lightest mobile single-sheet-fed document scanner in its class.

Let’s start with the image resolution. It has a CIS contact image sensor that scans at 600 dpi. It has an automatic document feeder but without a tray, so it is basically only the automatic feeding mode. The scanning speed is 10 Images per minute and that is actually very good given its price. You can scan either documents like invoices or smaller pieces of paper like thin receipts. The device has a straight-pass that can also handle ID cards.

It doesn’t have duplex mode and you can’t expect that at this price. It is a USB powered device and there is no internal rechargeable battery, so you don’t need an AC adapter, you just plug in the USB cable and you’re good to go. If you want to connect this portable scanner to your personal computer you can only do it via USB port.

For Optical character recognition, it includes the Nuance OCR engine and it can create not only searchable PDF files but also Word Documents and Excel files with editable text. At this price point it is quite welcome to have the multitude of file formats.

The portable sheetfed document scanner can scan directly to the cloud to places like Google Drive or Dropbox.

As far as the color depth is concerned, you get a 16-bit color depth for color scanning and 8-bit for grayscale. The scanning software is compatible with the 32-bit and 64-bit Windows versions and Mac OS X.

It only comes with a 1-year limited warranty in North America.

So in general you get a lot for your money and with a 4.3 user rating on Amazon, these figures are confirmed by the users.

Epson ES-55R

Product	Images / Minute	Resolution	Connectivity	Duplex Scanning	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Epson ES-55R	20 IPM	600 dpi	USB 2.0	No	No	0.59 lb. (0.26 kg)	Click for more info

In the Epson ES-50 vs ES-55R, it would be good to know that they are identical in terms of scan speed, resolution and actually everything else, but the epson workforce es-55r portable document scanner comes with a specialization in receipts and invoices. It is a mobile receipt scanner and it does come with software included for that in the form of the Epson ScanSmart Accounting Edition software.

What this 99$ software does is help you extract some data from receipts and invoices and it also easily exports data to QuickBooks or whichever easy receipt management software you have. You also get the standard Epson ScanSmart software too.

So if you need the accounting features, this portable document scanner would suit you better. Remember, even though this is marketed as a receipt scanner, it can handle the same document sizes that the ES-50 can. Given the price of the ES-55R we feel that wireless connectivity would have been justified.

Epson ES-60W

Product	Images / Minute	Resolution	Connectivity	Duplex Scanning	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Epson ES-60W	15 IPM	600 dpi	USB 2.0, Wireless 802.11 b/g/n	No	No	0.66 lb. (0.3 kg)	Click for more info

The Epson Workforce ES-60w wireless portable scanner is a different type of device.

First of all, as the name suggests it has a Wi-fi connection in addition to the USB connection, which for us is a game-changer in our purchasing decision. This means that you can scan to iOS or Android devices.

Then there is the scanning speed which is 50% faster at 15 PPM with the Epson ES-60W. It’s not groundbreaking speed, but it is good. This is not a color duplex document scanner either, so if you want to do duplex scans, you have to run them through the document feeder twice.

This compact mobile document scanner has a small LCD screen that displays the battery level and wireless status. Yes, that’s right there is an internal rechargeable battery, something which you don’t get with the first two handheld scanners.

From the point of view of price in the Epson ES-50 vs ES-60W, the ES-60W has a price tag that is 50% bigger, but still cheaper than the ES-55R. Of course it doesn’t have the special receipt software.

These are basically the four differences between this scanner and the first two. If you were just looking for the differences you can stop reading and scroll down to the conclusion.

It also has automatic feed mode but again, no automatic feeder. The included ScanSmart app offers is basically an OCR and Document Management software but at a very basic level. You can convert, you can share, but you can’t organize or do global searches.

This wireless portable document scanner has a daily duty cycle of 300 pages which should be enough for most cases. If you are doing more than that you should start looking for a desktop document scanner.

Epson DS-80W

Product	Images / Minute	Resolution	Connectivity	Duplex Scanning	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Epson DS-80W	15 IPM	600 dpi	Wireless 802.11 b/g/n, USB 2.0	No	No	0.66 lb. (0.29 kg)	Click for more info

The Epson DS-80W wireless portable document scanner is quite similar to the ES-60W with a few key differences.

The software included is the Epson Document Capture Pro, not the Epson Scan. The Capture Pro software offers features that you normally get on enterprise business scanners. It automatically detects the size of the document, corrects the document skew, can detect the color mode, skip blank pages and do text enhancement just to name a few.

In terms of warranty, the DS-80W document scanner wins with a 3-year limited warranty instead of just 1-year.

The power consumption is bigger on the DS-80W portable scanner.

In terms of compatibility, it works with PC, Mac, iOS or Android devices. Epson calls this the fastest, smallest and lightest wireless mobile single-sheet-fed document scanner.

Epson ES-50 vs ES-55 vs ES-60W vs DS-80W, which is the right one for me?

In the Epson ES-50 vs ES-55R, because of the huge price difference, we recommend the ES-50 if you don’t need the extra accounting software and you just want it for scanning documents and converting them to searchable PDFs.

In the Epson ES-50 vs Epson ES-60W, it is worth getting the ES-60W if you want to wirelessly scan critical documents and if you need the extra speed.

In the Epson DS-80W vs Epson ES-60W, we believe it is worth paying the extra 10$ for a 3-year limited Warranty from Epson America and the Document Capture Pro software.

We hope we managed to help you distinguish between these mobile scanners as their differences are not very clear in the brochures. There are other options from the same manufacturer, more specifically the Epson workforce ES-65WR wireless portable scanner and the Epson workforce ES-300WR wireless scanner.